With August comes change over time. Armies of junior doctors will move from one post to another, for some this will be their first job, for others this will be their last. For me it is time to fall off the conveyor belt. Most of the time in hospital jobs it can feel like the ward is held together by your own blood, sweat and tears and you fear for its safety when you move on. Of course when walking back through it in a few months you are barely recognized and it is as if you were never there.
Words in Water Writ
Keats, whom perhaps is the most famous physician-poet seems to have recognized this the best (despite not practicing once qualified). His epitaph reads “Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water”. Words thought to be inspired from the seventeenth century play ‘Loves Lies a-Bleeding’:
“all your better deeds
Shall be in water writ”
